Jonathan Culpeper News Today

The Arden Encyclopedia of Shakespeare’s Language addresses questions of meaning and structure in the playwright’s work. Which words did he coin? Take a look.

He certainly did not invent the 1,000-odd words often attributed to him, says Jonathan Culpeper of Lancaster University. But then, most writers don’t coin one.

William Shakespeare used the word dotage to capture reduced mental ability (as in being blindly in love) rather than as a quaint term for old age, successes were really outcomes – one could talk of a ‘bad success’ – and, it turns out, the word bastar

New research by Lancaster University sheds light on Shakespearean times with the publication of The Arden Encyclopedia of Shakespeare’s Language, to be published by Bloomsbury on August 24. A key feature of the project is that is uses corpus linguistics, the computer-aided analysis of massive datasets of language, to provide evidence-based accounts of Shakespeare's language.

The fascinating two-volume book shines a light on all the weird and wonderful words used by Shakespeare - many of which have fallen out of the lexicon.

Research suggests Australia’s brand of politeness puts an emphasis on ‘being welcoming and showing solidarity’ … and ‘taking the piss’.